This edited collection responds to Richard Kearney’s recent work on touch, excarnation, and embodiment, as well as his broader work in carnal hermeneutics, which sets the stage for his return to and retrieval of the senses of the lived body.

Here,14 scholars engage the breadth and depth of Kearney’s work to illuminate our experience of the body. The essays collected within take up a wide variety of subjects, from nature to non-human animals to our experience of the sacred and the demonic, from art’s account of touching to the political implications of various types of embodiment. Followed by an inspired new reflection from Kearney himself, in which he lays out his vision for anacarnation, this volume is an important statement about the centrality of touch and embodiment in our experience, and a reminder that, despite the excarnating tendencies of contemporary life, the lived body remains a touchstone for wisdom in our increasingly complicated and fragile world.

Written for scholars and students interested in touch, embodiment, phenomenology, and hermeneutics, this diverse and challenging collection contributes to a growing field of scholarship that recognises and attempts to correct the excarnating trends in philosophy and in culture at large.